44 Marxism and Literature
sc iou.snes~ of human beings, in which both the eVQ.I.uti~!l~.i'.!!!d.
the.hlstorIcal processes can be ..siven full weight, but alsO within
wliICFitIiey can De aOOinguisned . in the cp mplcx yonatians-oL
ac~~guage u ~ is from this-theoretical foundation that -
\~e ca.n go on to di stinguish 'literature', in a specific socia-
~~!~rlcal devole ment of writing. from the abstract retrospec-
!IV~ concept, so co mmon in Orthodox Marxism, which reduces
It, hke language itself, to a unction and then a (superstructural)
b.Y-product of c~lIecli'!.~ But before wo can go on 10 this,
we ~ust ex~mme the concepts of literature which, based on
ear her theories of language and consciousness. stand in the wa~
----
3. Literature
. - It is tivel di concept. In ordinary
usage it appears to be no more than a specific escrlption, and
what is described is then, as a rule, so highly valued that there is
a virtually immediate and unnoticed transfer of the specific
values of particular works and kinds of work to what operates as
a concept but is still firmly believed to be actual and practical.
. Indeed the special p roperty of 'literature' as a concept is that it
claims this kind of importance and priority. in the concrete
i achievements of many particular great works, as against the
'abstraction' and 'generality' of other concepts and of the kinds
[ of practice which they, by contrast, deUne. Thus it is common to
see 'literature' defined as 'full . cen tral , immediate human
I experience' , usually with an associated reference to 'minute
particulars'. By con trast, 'society' is often seen as essentially
I general and abstract: the summaries and averages,. rather than
(1,i
, e direct substance, of hwnan hVlO ~. Other related concepts.
J such as 'pohtics , SOCiology'. or 'Ideo ogy', a.ru simHarl.x..u.laCB.d....-.-
:iiiildown raded, as mer hardened oul er shells (;
iving experience of liter.
6nalvey 0
.tar.ed..J...uth..-
e concept, in th is familiar form , am be shown
in two ways: theoretically aud historically. It is true that one
popular version of the concept has been deve loped in ways that
appear to protect it, and in practice do often protect it, against
any such arguments. An essential abstraction of the ' personal'
and the 'immediate' is ca rried so far that, within this highly
developed form of thought, the whole process of abstraction has
been dissol ved. None of its steps can be retraced , a nd the
abstraction of the 'conc rete' is a perfect and virtually unbreaka-
ble circle. Arguments from theory or from history are simply
evi den ce of the incurable abstraction and generality of those
who are putting them forward. They can then be co ntemptu-
ously rejected, often without speCific reply. which would be
only to fall to their level.
This is a powerful and often forbiddin g syste m of abstractiuD,
in which the concept of 'literature' becomes actively ideologi-
cal. Theory ca n do so mething aga inst it, in the necessary recog-
nition (which ought hardly. to those who are really in contact
46 Marxism and Literature
w ith literatu re. to n eed a ny long preparation) that whatever else
'it' may be. literature is -th e process and the res!.llt of ~Q!'Uial:
cOrnOsi tioD within the social a-nd formal properties of a Ja n- ~
a e. T e ce Ive suppreSSIOn 0 1.5 process and it s circum-
stances, which is achieved by shifting the concept to an undif-
ferentiated equivalence with 'i mmediate living experienc:e'
(indeed. in some cases, to more than this. sotha l the actual lived
experi ences of society and history are seen as less pa rticular and
immedia te than those of literature) is an ex traordinary ideologi.
cal fea t. Thevery process tha t is spec if ic, that of actual composi-
tion , hos errectively disappeared o r ha s been di splaced to a n
internal and se lf-proving procedure in which writing of this
. 's eoui n e) believed to be (however many questions are
then besge ) ' imm iate livmg experience' itself, Appeals to
the history of liternture, over Ilsimii::leruoandCiffaordinarily
various range, from the Mobinog ion to Middlemorch . or from
Poradiso Lost to The Prelude, cause a momentary hesitation
\U1til va rious depend ent categoriesofiIlc concep--r--are-mo~ '"
into place.:.. ~myth~ ._'iQiffiiDCir:-'Ilction ', 'rwist fiction': "cpic'/ 'I
' lyric' , 'a utobi~~a.hY':' What from another point o f vIew might '"
reasonabTY1>e en as initial definitions of the processes and
ci rcumstances of com position arc converted, within the
ideologica l concept, to 'forms' of what is sti ll triumphantly
defi ned as 'fu ll , cen tral, immediate human experiencc', Indeed
when an y concept has so profound and complex an internal
specializi ng development. it can hardly be examined or QUos
tioned at all from outside, If we are to underst'a nd its signiJi
ca nce, and the complica ted facts it partially revea ls and partially
obscures, we must turn to exam ipjng the deve lopment of 1M-.
concept itself. .... :----
.... Tn it s modern f~~concept of 'literat ure' did not emerge
earlier than the~ , ltffiDt rentwy and was not full y developed
until the nineteen cen tury, et the-condi11Ons for its
emcrgeDccnaCl-neen-developin~'ce the Renaissa nce, The
\Vord itself came into English use in th~Jq,urteenth...CJUJ1uqt.,-
follOWing French and Latin precedents; its root was Latinlittera,_
a letter of the alphabet. LilLe~re, in the commo n car!,x spel.
lin , was lh ' d rGIDnrt'Tc'8drng: 0l"b"OIn8 ohio
.!9-J:e a f 'gJ'~l! was of'len 'c IOS'eTotllCSense of
modem H,~, which was not in the language until the late
nineteenth century. its introduction iD part made necessary by
Literature 47
th e movement of literature to a different sense. The normal
adjective associafe('r"Wi{h- Ttterature - was 1l~~ Literary
appeared in the sense of reading ability and expe rience in the
seventeenth century, and did not aCQuire its sp~ia li zed modern
meaning until the eighteenth century,
Lilero!u~e-a;;-~... category was1I.ien a specialization of the
ea formerly categorized as d!to.ric and grammar: a s~
ti to rcadin and. in the material oontext ofilie'diwclo ment
'nlin to the prlOle war lI li eSpe(;18 y t e boo . II was
eventuall y to ecome a more general category than poetry or the
ea rlier poesy, which had been, general terms for imagi~ative
composition, but which in relation to the devolopment of htero
ture beca me predomina ntly specialized, from the seventeenth
ce'''""y, 10 metrical .E?mposilion l!..~~'~y:-:~~~~
Raoon-"Iearned in all literature a nd erudition, divine and
humane"-8 od as late as Johnson-"he had probably more than
com mon literature, as his son add resses him in one of his most
elabora te Latin poems", Litera ture , that is to so w ,", ,
d use and condition rather an 0 pro uction, It was a particu
rar speciahzaUon of whnt had hitherto been seen as an activity or
practice, and a specializa tion, in the circumstances, which was
inevitably made in terms of social class, In its first extended
sense, beyond the bare sense of 'literacy', i~as n definitjoD of
,.., " " s s i articular
social distinction , New JX11itical concepts of the 'nation' and
new va luations of the 'vernacular' interacted with a persistont
emphasis o n 'literature' as rcading in the 'classical' languages,
But still, in th is first stage, into the eighteenth centu ry, Jiteroture
/?\w rimaril a generali ed social concept, expressing a cc, '
V minority) eve 0 educational achieve : 1S ~~a
a poten a an even a y ra., 12e altemativettoflnl ?',
:;:;tr.
ertifii're as pnntcoDOoks': tbe cb'ects in and throu h Whl
ac 1 as emonstrate '
It is rn a , Wi )n !he lo.rms of thi s development,
literature rlormOIIYlDChided all prl~~!'~ boOk5:Jhere w as not
nccp.ssaryspocfafiiation to 'imaginative' wOrkS, Literature was
sti ll primarily reading..ahiUt)t.ADd.....ow:tiog experie.pce, and thIS
 48 Marxism a nd Literature
included philosophy, history. and essays as well as poems. Were
the new eighteenth-cenlury novels ' literature'? That question
was first approached, not by definition of their mod e or content,
but by reference to the s tand cds of 'polite' or 'huma ne' learn ing.
Was drama literature? This question was to exercise successive
generations, n ot because of a n y substantial difficulty but
because of the practical limits of the category. If litera ture was
reading, could a mode written for spoken performan()!! be said to
be literature, and if not, where was Shakespea re? (But of course
he could n ow be read; this was made possible. a nd 'literary', by
texts .)
A t one level the definition indicated by this development has
pe rs isted. Li terature los t its earliest sense of reading ability and
reading experience, and became an apparently objective catc
gory of printed works of a certain quality. The concerns of a
'literary editor' ora 'literary supplement' would still be defined
in this way. But three complicating tend encies can then be
distingu ished: first, a ~.hi QfLOm 'learnin 'to 'taste' r' ibili
).y.:a~itcrio n defining literarY qua ity; econd, an increasing
spec ializauon oflltflrature fo 'creativc' or 'imaginative' works:
thi rd , a developmen t of the concept of'tradi tion' within national
terms, resulting in the more effective definition of 'a nalional
literature'. The sources of each of these tendencies ca n be dis-
cerned from the Renaissance, but it was in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries that they ca me through most powerfully,
until they beca me, in the twentieth century, in effect received
assumptions. We ca n look more closely at each tendency.
The s hift from ' learnJng ' to 'taste' or 'sensibility' was in effect
the final stageaT a s hift from a para-national scholarly profes-
sion, with its original social base in the church anc! !bclJ..in th~
un tversiti.es , and with the classical languages iii ris~.!lm!!!:..
.eri!lJ,J.Q.a ptofesslon tncre:fsiffglY.-.a.IDne1:ttf.Y"1.GCIass posi tion.
from ,!,~i ch essen!ially general criteria, applicable ~~__
o~th<ID litcrature , were derived. In Eng[aW-eerfaln specific
features of bourgeois developmtmt strengthened the s hift; the
_ 'cu ltivated amateur' was one of its elements, but '~nd
\ t s.,ttns jbjJilyJ cro essentially unifying concepts. ill.class term ~
0 und could be applied over a very wid e range from pubHl: and
priva te behaviour to (as w ordsworth complained] either wine or
poctry. As s ubjective definitions of apparentlyobjectivo criteria
(which acquire their apparent objectivit y from an actively con
Literature 49
sensual class sense], and at th e same time apparently objective
definitions of subjective qualities, ' t ~te' and 'sen sibility ' a re
(L,char!.~teFi~ticany bourg~!s caleltor~s. - -. ~------
"-" Criticism" is an essentially assoclatea concept, ID t~ e ~~
development. As a new term , from the seven teenth century, it
rr:I
veIOPQ(l(81WayS in difficult relations with its general and
persistent sen se of fa ultfinding) from 'commen!aries' on I~tera
tu re within the ' learn ed' criterion, to the conscIous exercise of
'tast~'. 'se nsibility' , and 'di scri mi na tion'. It became a signifjC8~
specia l form of the general tendenc in the conce t or literature
tow~an cmp aSls on t c use or (co~p~.con 5" mptiD.D::
ofworb-;rafficr lhau on their production . While the habilsofu se
on;onswllpLlbu were silll I.Iie'Criferl 8 01 a relatively integrated
_._--',.----, had . . as well as weaknes-
, on
'living' substance (I n which its con trast with
the 'lea rned' trad ition was especially marked). It was really onl y
as this class lost its relative cohesion and dominance that tbe
weak ness of tbe concepts as concepts beca me evident. And it is
eviden ce of at least its residual h egemon y thatcriticism , taken as
a new conscious discipline into the universi ties, to be practised
by what beca me a new para-national profession, retai n~d these
founding class concepts, alongside attempts to cstabhsh new
abstractJy objecti ve criteria. Mo!!: seriously, criticism was taken
to be a natural definition of Literary stUdi es, tHemselves derIDed
by the s pecializing (printed works of a certain quaHty)
of literature . Thus
a re,
process of the speciali za tion of 'literature' to 'creative' or
 Marxism and Literature
50
'i maginative' w~rk.s is very m':lch more complica ted. It~ in part
a Jl!!I jor affirmative response, m the name of an e~emJa ll ~gen. _
eral humnJl creatrvlly. to ihe"FoCI8Jly rep~~s.sivoand intellectu- --, tA
ltHy-mecbanica1 .Q.!:9lL9f a new socia I o rder: that of capitaJ ism '-1
~-ffSpet:.1aIlYiDdustrial-capltali!-l!l. The pracTIcal spccializa- .
lion o rWo"rlctOfJie wagcTa6ourproduciiOQ of co mmodities; of
'bei ng' to 'work' in these terms; of language to the passing of
'rationa l' or 'informative' 'messages'; of social relations to func-
lions within a systemil tic economi c and politi ca l order: all these
pr~ and liJ!?!!B~\lcre challenged in the name of a fu ll and
l'i'6ernUng 'iruaginaHon' or 'creativity', The central Romantic
assertions, which depend on these concep ts. have a signific- r;
ao ll y absolute range, from poli tics and nature to work a nd art ~
'Literature' acquired , in this period, a quite n ew resonance, but it ~
was not yet 8 specialized resona nce , That ca me later as. agai ns t
the full pressures of an industrial capital ist order, the assertion
became defensive and reserving where it had once been positive
and absolute. In 'art' and 'literature', the essen Ual and saving
humon qualities must, in the early phase, be 'extended'; in the
later pha~ p~/ijl:t.ved', ' -----
- SoYerlil concepts d eveloPed togeth er, 'Art' was s hifted from
its sense of a general human skill to a special province, defined
by 'imagination' and 'sensibility'. 'Aesthetic'. in the same
period, shifted from its sellse of goneral perception to a
specia lized category of the 'artistic' ano the 'beautiful'. 'F~
8.Q.<!.~)1h--J! n~v te!,ID ~m ~~fLarlY_Dineteenth century) might
b;!! sQ!tll1!qm lr~~~t clas1.P0sit!o n as 'fancies' of-'lics'"burr('
fr<mUhls...al1eJ:lli!tivU9~ition.. m:oo~onoiinfiL1istlie-lJCarer ri~
..fp.Dgin.g.tjx$t.ffi1~" 'Romance' and 'romantic' were given newly
specialized POSitiVe emph ases.. 'Literature' moved with aU
these. The wide general meaning was s till avai lable, but a
specialized meaning came steadily to predominate, around the
dis tinguishing qualities of the 'i maginative' and the 'aesthetic',
'Taste' l'nd ' sensibilit y' had begun as ca tegories of a social con ~
dition,1n the new specialization, comparable but more elevated
qualities were assigned to 'the works themselves', the 'aesthetic
objects',
Dut there was still one substa ntial uncertainty: whether the
elevated qualities were to be assigned to the 'i maginative'
dimension (access to a truth 'h igher' or 'deeper' than 'scientific'
or 'objective' or 'everyday' reality; a claim consciously su bs titut~
Uteratu re 51
ing itself for the traditional claims of religion) or to the 'aesthe
tic ' dimension ('beau ties' of language or style). Within the
speCiaJiza tion of literature , alternative schools made one or
other of th ese emphases, bu t there were a Iso repea ted attempts to
fuse them, making 'truth' and 'beauty', or 'truth ' and 'vitality of
language', identica l. Under co ntinuing pressure these argu
ments became not only positive assertions bu t increasingly
negative and comparat ive, aga inst all other modes: not onl y
against 'scie nce' and 'soclety'-the abstract and generalizing
modes orother 'kinds' of experience-and not only against other
kinds of writing-now in their turn specialized as 'discu rsive' or
'factual'-but, ironically, agai ns t much of 'lit era ture'
itself- 'bad' writing , 'popular' writing, 'mass culture'. Thus the
category which had appeared objective as 'all printed books',
and which had been given a socialclass fou ndation as 'poHte
learning' and the domain of 'taste' and 'sens ibility'. now beca me
a n ecessarily selective and self-defining area: not all 'fi ction'
was 'imaginative'; not all ' literature' \Vas 'Li teratu re', 'Cri U c~s m '
acquired a quite new and effectively primary importance, since
it w as now th e only way of validating this speCialized and
selective ca tegory, It was at once a discrimination of the authen-
tic 'grea t' or 'major' works, with 8 consequent grading of ,minor,
works and an effective exclusion of 'bad' o r 'negligible' works,
and a practical rea lization and communica tion of the 'major'
values. What had been claimed for 'art' and the 'crea tive imagi-
nation ' in theccntral Romantic argu men ts was n ow claimed for
'criticism', as the central 'humane' activity and 'discipline',
This development depended , in the first pla ce, on an elabora-
tion of the concept of 'tradi tion'. The idea of a 'national litera-
ture' had been growing strongly since the Renaissance. rt drew
on a ll the p ositive forces of cultural nationalis m and its real
achievements.. It brought with it a se nse of the 'greatness ' or
'glory' of the native language, for which before the ~enais~nce
there had been conventional apology by comparison With a
' classical' range, Each of these rich and strong achievements had
been actual; the 'national literature' and the ' ma~r language'
were now indeed 'there', Out , within the spec ialization of'litera-
ture'. each was re-defi ned so that it could be brough t to identity
with the select ive and self-defining 'literary values'. The
'na tional lit era ture' soon ceased to be a history and became a
tradition. It was not, even theoretica lly, alilhat had been written
 52 Marxism a nd Litera ture
or aU kinds of writing. It was a selection which culminated in,
and in a circular way defined. the 'literary values' which 'criti-
cism' was asserting. There were then always local dispu tes
about who and what should be incJuded. or as commonly ex-
cluded. in the definition of this 'tradition'. To have been an
Englishman and to have written was by no means to belong to
the 'English literary tradition', just as to bean Englishman and to
speak was by no means to exemplify the 'greatness' of the lan-
guage- indeed the practice of most EngHsh speakers was con-
tinually cited as . ignorance' or 'betrayal' or 'debasement' of just
this 'greatness', Selectivit y and self-definition, which were the
eviden t processes of 'criticism' of this kind. were, however.
p rojected as 'literature' itself, as 'literary values' Bnd even fin ally
as 'essential Englishness': the absolute ratification of a limited
and specia lizi ng consensual process. To oppose the terms of this
ratification was to be 'again st literature' .
It is one of the sign s of the success of this ca tegorization o f
literature that even Marxism has made so little headway against
it Marx himself. to be s ure, hardly tried. His charactoristica ll y
intelligent a nd informed incidental di scussions of actual litera-
ture a re now oft en cited, defensively, as evidence of the humane
flexibility of Marxism , when they ought really to be cited (with
no particular devaluation) as evidence of how far he remained,
in these matters, within the ronventions a nd categories of his
lime. The radieul cha llenge of the emphasis on 'pradica l 0011 -
sciousness' was thus never carried through to the categories of
'litera ture' and 'the aesthetic', and there was always hesitation
about the practical application, in this area, of propositions
which were held to be central and decisive almost everywhere
else.
When such application was eventually made, in th e later
Marxist tradition, it was of three main kinds: an attempted
assim ilation of ' literature' to 'ideology ', which was in practice
little more than banging one inadequate category agains t
another. an effect ive and important inclusion of 'popular litera-
ture'-the 'li terature of the peopJe' - as a neccSSllry but neg-
lected part of the 'literary tradition'; and a sustai ned but uneven
attempt to relate 'li teratu re' to the social and economic history
within which 'it' had been produ ced. Each of these last two
attemplshas been significant. In the former a 'trad ition' has been
genu inely extended. In the latt e~ there has been an effective
U terature 53
reconstitution, over wide areas, o f his torica l social practice,
which makes the abstraction of 'li terary values' much more
problematica l, and which, more positively, allows new kinds o f
reading and new kinds of questions about 't he works them-
sel ves'. This has been known, especially, as 'Marxist criticism'
(a radical varian t oC the establis hed bou rgeois practice) though
other work has been done on quite different bases, from a wider
social history and Crom wider conceptions of 'the people', 'the
language', and 'the nation '.
It is significant that 'Marxist criticism' and 'Marxist literary
studi es' have been most successful , in o rdinary terms, when
they have worked within the received category of 'literature',
which they may have extended or even revalued , but never
radiCally questioned or opposed. By contrast, what looked like
Cundamental theoretical revoluation, in the attem pted assimil a-
tion to 'id eology', was 8 disastrous failure, and fundamen talJy
compromi sed, in this whole orca, th e status of Marxism itself.
Yet for half a century now there have been other and more
significant tendencies. Lukacs oontributed a profound revalua-
tion of 'the aesthetic'. The Frankfurt School, with its special
emphasis on art , undertook a sustained re-exami nation of 'artis-
tic production ', centred on the concept of 'mediation'. Gold
mann undertook a radical revaluation of th e 'creative subject '.
Marxist variants oC formalism undertook radical redefinition of
the processes of wri ling, with new uses of th e concepts of 'signs'
and 'texts', and wHh a Significantly related refusal of 'literature'
as a ca tegory. The methods and problems indicated by these
tendencies will be examined in detail later in this book.
Yet the crucial theoretical break is the recognition oC 'litera-
ture' as a specializing socia l and historical ca tegory. It should be
clear that this does not diminish its im portance. Just because it is
historica l, a key concept of a major phase of a culture, it is
decisive evidence of a particular form of the social development
of language. Within its term s, work of ou tstanding and perma-
nent importance was done. in specific socia! and cultural rela-
tionshi ps. But what has been happening, in ourown rentury, is a
profound transformation of these relationships, directly con-
nected with changes in the basic mea ns of production. These
changes are most evident in the new technologies of lan guage,
which have moved practice beyond the rela tively uniform and
specializing technology of print. The principal changes are the
 54 ' Marxism and Literature
i electronic transmissio n and recording of speech and of writing
, for speech, and the chemical and elect ronic compos ition and
trans mission of images, in complex relations with speech and
with writing for speech, and including images which can them.
selves be 'written '. None of these means ca ncels print. or even
dim inishes its s pecific importan ce. but they are not s imple add i-
tions to it , or mere alternatives. In th ei r complex con nect io ns
and interrelations they compose a new substantia l practice in
social language itself, over 8 range from public address and
manifest representation to 'inner speech' and verba l thought.
I For they are always more tha n new technologies. in the limited
\ sen se. They are means of production , developed in direct if
I co~plex relations wit~ pro~oundly chan gi ng and extend ing
. SOCIal and cultural relationshIps: cha nges elsewhere recogniza
ble as deep political and econom ic transformationS'. It is in no
way su rprising that the specialized concept of 'literature',
developed in precise forms o f correspondence with a particular
social class. a particular orga nization of learning. and the
appropriate particular technology of print. should now be so
often invoked in retrospective. nostalgic. or reactionary moods .
as a form of opposition to what is correctl y seen asa new phose of
civilization. The situation is hi storicall y comparable to that
invocat ion of the divine and the sac red . and o f divine and sac red
learning. aga inst the new humanist concept of literature, in the
difficult and contested transition from feudal to bourgeois
society.
What ca n then be see n as happening. in each transition. is a
h istorica l development of socia l language itself: finding new
mea ns. new forms and then new definitions of a changing prac.
tica l conscious ness. Manyoftheactive values of ' literature' have
then to be seen. not as tied to the concept. which came to limit as
well as to s ummarize them, but as elements of a continuing and
cha ngi n g practice which already su bsta ntially. and now at the
lovel oftheoretical redefiniti on, is moving beyond its old fonns.
4. Ideology
The concept of 'i deology' did not origi nate in Marxism a nd is
, still in n o way confined to it. Yet it is eviden tly a n important
. - i - - -. ..concept in almost all Marxist thinking about culture. a nd espe-
cia lly abou t literature a nd ideas, The difficulty then is that we
. have to distinguish. three comlllon versio ns of the cono:pt,
\vhiCh are aU comm on in Mar,x ist writing. These arc, broadly:
(i) a system of beliefs ch aracteristic of a pa rticular class o r
group;
(il) a system of illusory beliefs-false ideas or false con
sciousness-which can be contrasted with true or scientific
kno wled ge;
(iii) the general process of the production o f meani.ngs and
ideas.
In one variant of Marxis m, senses (i) and {Ii} can be effectively
combined. In a class society. all beliefs are founded on class
J _..
i
posi tion and the systems of belief of all classes-o r, quite com
manly. ~f all classes preceding, and olher t han, the proletariat,
whose forma tion is the project of the abolition of class society
-are the n in part or w holl y false (i llusory). The specific prob-
lems in this powerful general proposition have led to intense
con troversy within Marxist thought. It is not unusual to find
some form of the proposition alo ngside uses of the simple sense
to. as in the choracterization. for exarnple by Lenin, of 'socia list
ideology'. Another way of broadly retaining but distinguishing
senses (i) and (il) is to use sense (i) for systems of belief founded
on class pos ition . includin g that of th e proletariat within class
society, and sense (ii) for contrast with ti n a broad sense) scien
tif ic knowledge of all kind s. which is based on reality rather than
illusion s. Sen se (iii) undercuts most of these associations and
distinctions. for the ideologica l process-the production of
mea nings and ideas-is then seen as ge nera l and un iv~rsa l, and
ideology is either this process itself or the area of Its study.
Positions associated with senses ti) and {ii} a re then brought to
bear in Marxist ideo logical s tudies.
In th is situation there can be no ques tio n of establishing,